Latest News

Court Reform/Judicial Accountability

• Chicago Appleseed is working on a proposal to make information about campaign contributions to judicial candidates more easily-accessible to attorneys and litigants who appear before those judges. It is with interest we noticed that Facebook has asked the Federal Election Commission to confirm that advertisements on its website will not have to meet campaign regulations which require identifying who paid for the ads.

• Information about campaign contributions is particularly relevant where judicial elections are concerned. A Pennsylvania group working on judicial election reform responds to a newspaper article on the issues raised when lawyers donate to the election campaigns of judicial candidates.

Immigration Court Reform: Immigration policy remains at the forefront of American politics this week.

• The President gave a speech on immigration policy (video link). Here’s a sample of reactions: the Border Network on Human Rights; the Economist on the intertwining issues at play; the Los Angeles Times  on how to move forward; the MetroWeekly on implications for nontraditional families; the Center for American Progress on what happens when states introduce their own immigration laws.

• Meanwhile, immigration court reform moves very slowly.  The Immigration Court Observation Project released its updated second report (.pdf), analyzing observations of 414 immigration hearings in New York city between October 2009 through November 2010.

• The New York Times had a piece last week on eliminating barriers to obtaining counsel in immigration proceedings, demonstrating further the need for immigration court reform.

• Governor Quinn leads the nation in withdrawing Illinois from the controversial “Secure Communities Program“, which aimed to deport immigrants who were criminals, but in practice disproportionately affected immigrants who had committed no crimes or misdemeanors.

Criminal Justice Reform

• The Center for Court Innovation has a monograph (.pdf), looking at three community court systems, which expand upon the drug court model to create better systems of justice for communities, and advocates for a community courts to expand successful drug courts.

Community Justice

• The Nation highlights the devastating situation faced by many of the nation’s poor, who are waiting in long lines at privately funded food banks, in order to supplement insufficient public aid.